Adventures in Sourdough

The dough (a 50-50 mix of white and rye flour) at the beginning of the adventure.

I don’t know why, but I want to make bread that is ONLY risen by a sourdough starter. I’ve messed around with sourdough starters for years. Years ago I used a recipe with baker’s yeast (not a good idea. The acidic environment in a good sourdough will kill bakers yeast). I also tried one that used yogurt to get things going (not a bad idea, as the wild bacteria in good sourdough is a lactobacillus bacteria, and so are some of the bacteria in an active yogurt culture. This would also explain why some starters feed with flour and milk, rather than flour and water, but…yuck…warm milk sitting on top of my fridge…can’t go there). I’ve made some tasty starters, but I have never been able to create a starter that could rise a loaf of bread on its own. Turns out, I still can’t. Here’s my adventure.

Searching with my friend Google, I came across Sourdough.com. Tons of great information on all things sourdough, if you are willing to read through it. Sounded like this guy had done his research, in spades, and he had been a commercial baker. It was worth a try.

The site recommended the Professor Calvel method for making a new starter. This recipe was different in several ways from ones I had seen before. It used a 10:6 ratio of flour to water (much higher flour than is typical), a bit of barley malt and salt at the beginning, and rye flour (which I had heard was a good source for the bacteria you want). So off I went to buy some rye flour and some barley malt. I’d been meaning to visit Jim’s Homebrew Supply in Spokane anyway.

Not feeling comfortable throwing out all that flour as the starter got going (you dump 1/2 the starter every time you feed it, which is 5 times in 48 hours), I decided to try cutting the recipe in half. Perhaps this was my mistake.

I can’t begin to express how hard this “dough” was to work with. Ugh.

At the fourth feeding, the dough was too sticky to knead. Think wall paper paste. Thank goodness I have a standing mixer. Silicone spatulas were essential. By the fifth feeding, the dough was supposed to be doubling in size after every feeding. Mine had a nice sour smell, no signs of spoilage and a few bubbles, but was definitely NOT doubling. I wanted a hare. I got a tortoise.

I kept going. The Sourdough site is very very insistent that you need to feed your starter at least twice a day. Somewhere on the 4th day I decided to reinoculate the mix with more rye flour, since this is where the sourdough yeast and bacteria is supposed to come from. Maybe by cutting the recipe in half, I had somehow not reached a critical mass? Nothing.

The thinned starter is much easier to work with. These bubbles indicate it is active.

Around the 6th day (and most of a 5 lb bag of flour later), I decided I had a good starter that was not going to rise on its own, and switched to a 1:1 ratio of flour to water by weight when feeding, which substantially thins out the batter, making it easy to work with (I was tired of trying to get flour glue out of all my bowls).

I added cornmeal to the “starter” until the dough was workable.

What to do with all that “thrown out” starter? Well…I hate to throw stuff out. So except for the first feeding, I saved the mix in a container in the refrigerator, and after a couple of days, I made dog biscuits. (The first few days, the starter is not “fit” for human consumption, but I have dogs who eat…well, you don’t want to know some of the things they have eaten. So I figured a well-baked dough would not hurt them.) A bunch of corn meal I needed to use up, some meat drippings, a little sugar and garlic powder, some salt and an egg later, and voila, a dough I could roll out and work with. (My go to dog biscuit recipe is posted below – what I made with the sourdough reject dough was loosely based on this).

Five minutes in a 450 degree oven on a pizza stone. Yum.

Once the dough was sufficiently “sour” after a few days, I kept the “throw away” dough and made it into pizza shells for a quick supper (who needs Boboli). This suggestion came from the Sourdough site, and was a good one.

So, does this starter make a good bread? I don’t know yet. But I will be adding yeast for leavening when I try it. I may just go back to my old standby. The “Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day” method is great, gives a good “sour” flavor as the dough ages, and does not need to be fed twice a day. Mother Earth News has several good articles on this method to get you started (I have terrible luck with their internal search engine – try putting “artisan bread five minutes mother earth” into Google). Highly recommended.

Sourdough Starter with Rye
(Calvel Method – adapted to English volume measurements for those without a kitchen scale or the ability to measure in grams).

Note: Based on the Calvel feeding schedule, the best time to start this recipe is 6:00 pm. I cut the recipe below in half and did not have great success – so you might want to make the whole thing.

2 cups Rye Flour (stone ground if possible – I used Hodgson Mills. Bulk organic from a natural foods store would also be a good choice – this is less than 1 lb)

2 cups all-purpose flour (unbleached and organic if possible)

1 1/2 cups warm water (filtered if your tap water has chlorine)

1/2 tsp salt

3/4 tsp barley malt extract (any kind – there are a lot. Borrow a bit from a brewer friend if possible. Comes in liquid and powder. I used powdered).

Step 1: Mix all ingredients together and knead briefly. Place in a measuring bowl (glass prefered) so you know the starting volume and cover loosely with plastic wrap. Set in warm place (80 degrees is ideal) for 22 hours.

Step 2: At 4:00 pm the next day, measure out 1/2 the dough and knead in 2 cups all-purpose flour, 3/4 cup warm water and a pinch of salt (around 1/8 tsp). Toss out the rest of the dough, clean out your measuring container, put new dough back in now clean container, cover again and place in warm place.

At 11:00 pm, repeat step 2 above.

At 6:00 am, repeat step 2 above.

At noon, repeat step 2 above.

At 6:00 pm, repeat step 2 above. Your dough should now be doubling in size between feedings, and should be fed twice a day for at least a week before any refrigeration.

Let me know if this works for you or what your sourdough adventures have been. For me this one was a bust.

Loki and Freya’s Favorite Dog Biscuits
Adapted from the “Sniff N’ Bite Biscuits”, out of MacPherson’s K-9 Cookbook, plus a recipe I found on the internet

2 1/2 cups whole wheat flour

1/2 cup powdered skim milk

1 tsp brown sugar

1/2 tsp garlic powder

1/3 cup meat drippings (I save bacon and other grease in a jar in the freezer until I am ready to make these).

1 egg, beaten

1/2 cup plus 2 tbsp ice water

Combine flour, powdered milk, sugar and garlic powder. Blend in meat drippings. Make a well in the mixture and stir in egg and ice water until blended. Form dough into a ball. Divide in two. Knead each ball on a floured surface for about 2 minutes. Roll out dough to between 1/4 and 1/2 inches thick. Cut with biscuit cutter or knife (Christmas cookie cutters would be really funny here). Bake 30 minutes at 350 degrees. (I flip mine mid bake and use parchment paper to prevent sticking). Cool. (Make sure these are thoroughly baked if you live in humid climates or they will mold in the bag. I often just leave mine in the oven with it off until it cools).

Tonight (this morning, actually) is the day before market at the Ponderosa. After picking all that could be picked for processing today, with the intention of processing it all after dinner, my wonderful neighbor came over to visit. While I finished watering the greenhouses for the evening, she went to get some green beans to make her wonderful homemade spring rolls. In an effort to ‘help’ me, she picked all my peas. After hand washing and processing all I had picked for market, I then had to shuck and process an entire bucket of peas. Thus, it’s the middle of the night. The peas are blanched and draining before freezing so I have to do something in the meantime. I figured I’d come visit Jennifer’s blog to let her know what’s going on with the sourdough I’ve adopted from her.

I believe I told you that I have not been very successful in making sourdough bread in the past. My daughter calls my previous attempts ‘brownie bread’ because instead of the irregular holy stretchy crumb inherent to a great sourdough, my bread had the texture of brownies. It did, however, have a great sourdough flavor. So, Jennifer’s sourdough starter in hand, I am attempting this feat once again. My heaven that’s an active starter!!

I am becoming a huge fan of Peter Reinhart and have thus far been successful with all of his recipes. So, following Peter Reinhart’s sourdough methods, I have accomplished converting Jennifer’s 50/50 starter into a 89% hydrated seed culture, which is similar to Peter’s from-scratch starter. That was left at room temperature for a few hours then refrigerated overnight. From there, Peter Reinhart’s recipe calls for converting the seed culture into a firm starter as he states that a firm starter contains more of the acetic bacteria that causes the sour taste, rather than a more slack starter that contains more lactic acid that doesn’t. After converting the seed culture into a firm starter (or barm), you leave it to double in size for approximately 4 hours. I went out to work in the garden and came back to the house after three and a half and it was huge!! The recipe then calls for again refrigerating the blob until tomorrow when I will mix the bread. So far, no commercial yeast and everything is going exactly as planned! Did I mention that Jennifer’s starter is a VERY active starter!? I’ll keep you updated!

I am not good at taking and uploading pics but will attempt to get better at it when life slows down (hehehe!). So, I made the bread and, needless to say, it was actually GREAT sourdough bread! No brownie texture. It was a bit dense because I degassed it a bit too much when I carefully slid the dough out of the bowl, divided it in half and formed it into loaves. Peter’s recipe made the dough a bit stiff and when I formed it into boules, I could not get the bottom to stick together very well so multiple attempts deflated the dough a bit too much. I will practice to get better. My daughter’s boyfriend, Ryan, is the ultimate sourdough critic and he loved it. So, Jennifer’s starter is a hit! Whatever she did to get that thing kicked into gear from the onset, it has worked marvelously! I will take pics with the next batch! Oh, the next batch will have roasted garlic. Yum!!